Remainders
by Arwen Jade Kenobi
Summary: It's the last thing you think about when you're being shot at but it is what defines your life if you live.


It's the last thing you think about when you're being shot at but it is what defines your life if you live. The pain is one thing; that can be ignored or suppressed in whatever fashion the injured person decides. Watson himself prefers to ignore it, to mentally suppress it until it becomes unbearable, then the fire or a hot bath suffices. It can also be assigned to whatever reason the afflicted person finds most preferable be it exhaustion, lack of food, or a friend pushing too hard. Watson has, at one time or another, used all of these.

The pain is one thing. The constant physical reminder is quite another. He doesn't consider himself a vain man but seeing that mess of flesh every morning when he gets dressed always makes his stomach turn and it always makes him look away.

He is too young to feel this broken, this useless, and this ugly.

He is shot in the left shoulder and he is shot in the left leg. If the shot to his shoulder hadn't knocked him to the ground he is quite certain that the shot to his leg would have blasted through his femur, severing the major blood vessels around it, and caused him to bleed to death before Murray could have done anything to save him. He would have died on that pack horse and that would have been the end of him. As it happens, he doesn't suffer the full shot to his leg. Instead it cuts through the soft tissue of his thigh. It hurts like the blazes, especially since he's already got a wound in his shoulder, but it's not enough for him to die on the spot. Murray saves him and they have to time to get to safety.

He doesn't think much of the damage when he's brought in. Quite frankly he's too busy dealing with the shock and the pain. When he becomes able to think of such things fever sets in and he, again, is unable to think of much else until he is sent back to England. Then he gets the first real, sober, look at the damage done by the bullets since the actual shooting months and months ago.

The leg wound really isn't too bad, and Watson only acknowledges that because he knows exactly how much worse it could have been. It's on the inside of his thigh and is quite easy to ignore; and it is the one that will cause him the most trouble once he meets Sherlock Holmes but it is by far the least noticeable. That honour is reserved for his shoulder.

The shoulder wound looks like someone had taken a blunt blade and sawed into it. It's all raised, angry skin and all he can think of when he looks at it is blood and sand and pain. It hurts more than the limp does or ever will. He decides that he's ever going to look at it and that no one is ever going to see it. He says that but the fact of the matter is that, at some point or another, he has to look at it. He can dress without looking at it and he can ignore it when he's clothed. At some point, however, he does have to bathe. It's always there at the corner of his eye. He refuses to look at it but it doesn't erase the fact that it's there. He can shut his eyes while bathing and avoid mirrors all he wants but it's always going to be there.

He does what he can to forget that he was once a military surgeon, to forget that he is now a useless invalid, but that usually takes the form of gambling on the horse races when he knows damn well that he can't afford this on his pension. It's only when he becomes preoccupied with the fact that he needs to either move out of London (impossible; he'd die outside the city) or find a flatmate willing to put up with him that he ignores both the gambling and the shoulder.

There have many times where Watson has thanked the God that he doesn't believe in for Stamford and their meeting that day. The reasons have all varied, the reasons keep changing and growing and adding as time goes on, but the gratitude remains. It always will.

"You've been in Afghanistan, I perceive," is where it all begins. It's a remark that would usually make Watson bristle. What did it matter that he was? And how the hell was it that it was anyone's business anyway? Was it written on his forehead for all to see? In the case of Sherlock Holmes it certainly was but it didn't bother him. The story of Watson's Afghan campaign is a story told through a host of other things of which the limp and the discomfort of his shoulder were minor details. Holmes does not offer him a seat, nor does he at their inspection of 221B or their subsequent moving in. Watson isn't sure whether Holmes doesn't care about his misery, or whether he's detected that it would be better to leave the matter unaddressed. He believes that it's the former while suspecting it's really the latter but he's thankful all the same.

Holmes, of course, mentions them eventually. There's no way around it when the pair of them are running all over London but any mention is of his leg. That is the most troublesome one on the pain end of things and Watson always presses on spite of it. This usually is to his detriment but he prides himself on the fact that he's never allowed his leg to interfere with a case. Holmes is usually too busy to pay attention to such things during a case but when he chooses to acknowledge it the thing is always done without words. Holmes will pull up chair or allow him into the bathroom first to have a bath after a cold and wet chase or any other similar, silent gesture. Watson's thanks are as silent as Holmes' inquiries and that is how things are between them for a good long while.

Then he gets ill, very ill. Mary and he are engaged by this point but Mary is away visiting some friends to spread the happy news. He likes to think that he would have reacted just as violently if Mary had been the one to try and pull his shirt off (he's burning up and doesn't have the good sense to think of the idea himself. But he is half mad with fever and pain at this point so exceptions have to be made), but he thinks that he wouldn't have. It doesn't matter to him if Mary sees it. He knows Mary won't care just as surely as he knows that Holmes will.

So he jumps back when Holmes makes his move, and nearly falls over the other side of the bed for his efforts. Instead he is sitting on the bed and splays his hand protectively against the buttons by his neck. Then he bunches the front of the shirt up tightly in his fist. "I'll do it," he forces out as he gets up and stumbles to the other side of the bed. He has it in his head that Holmes will be deterred by the bed for some reason – again he is half mad as this point to exceptions must be made. "Get out." Nothing is more pathetic, Watson has to admit, than a deliriously sick man trying to order someone out of their room.

Holmes, naturally, is far from deterred. "Don't be ridiculous," he scolds him as he all but vaults over the tiny bed. "You need to get out of that shirt, you're sweating through the thing and you can neither keep your hands still or your mind focused long enough to do so yourself."

Watson tries to retreat toward the door and instead manages to get himself cornered. "You can't see," he mumbles. "You can't see it. You can't know."

"Can't know what, Watson?"

"I'll do it," Watson urges. "I can do it."

"Yes you can, but I'm not sure you'll appreciate what will happen to that shirt if you do."

"You can't know."

"But I do."

Watson has no idea why he expects Holmes to have forgotten about the shoulder wound. He's assumed that Holmes has moved that but of information out of his little attic ages ago. It is never spoken of; no attention is ever drawn to it so Watson is very shocked even considering his current state of mind. "What?" he breathes. "How?"

"Even an idiot is aware that when a person is shot a scar remains," Holmes explains simply. "Now, pray, what is the problem? If it is what I think it is then you must think very little of me, indeed."

Watson can't answer, he still isn't sure whether that is because he is actually speechless or whether the illness isn't allowing him to process what Holmes is saying properly. Holmes, at any rate, seems to have assumed that latter as he hooks his long fingers under his own shirt and rolls it up to display an angry but tidy red gash of scared flesh just under his left ribs. A knife wound, Watson knows, a deep one at that.

"No one has seen this," Holmes explains quietly, "aside from the doctor who tended it, of course. I have been bested before, as you well know, but this was my first failure. It not only nearly cost me my life but it also cost me the life of my client." He pulls his shirt back down. "Now do you think less of me for it?"

Watson shakes his head. "course not," he mumbles.

"Then what the deuce makes you think that I'd give a damn whether your shoulder is scarred or not?" With that utterance Holmes strides forward and pulls the shirt off of him, buttons flying and scattering across the room. "I'm certainly not going to let your vanity impede your recovery." He grabs the nightshirt off the bed and, after taking the time to loosen the ties, holds it open and manhandles Watson into it. "It doesn't make you useless," he tells him, indicating the wound peeking out through the loose ties, "it makes you a survivor. Now, since you are a survivor who doubtless would be embarrassed at dying from an ailment as simple as this would you mind removing your trousers and getting into bed?"

He's too stunned to do anything but precisely what he is told.

Now his fever is broken and Holmes is sleeping in a chair next to him. A chair dragged up from the sitting room no less. Holmes wants to keep his vigil in comfort it appears, not that Watson blames him in the slightest. His desk chair is quite the torture device.

"Feeling better?" The question causes him to jump since Holmes has not moved or given any indication that he is awake.

"Much," he replies. "Thank you." He raises his hand to his left shoulder and looks at it through the still loose ties. For the first time in months he doesn't feel revulsion at it. "For everything," he clarifies.

"You are an obstinate patient, doctor," Holmes informs him. "Though I shouldn't be all too surprised; common knowledge does place doctors as being the worst patients."

Watson returns the knowing smile Holmes flashes his way and neither of them mention each other's scars again. Holmes sees both of Watsons scars again, however, and Watson does see a few more of Holmes' but neither of them think anything of it. Holmes sees Watson's scars as proof that the doctor is made of sterner stuff than people give him credit for and Watson sees the detective's as evidence that Holmes is human and can hurt just as easily as anyone else.

Neither of them tell each other these facts but they both don't need to hear it.


End file.
